/ 



r 



Prefatory Verse 

and 

The Making 

of a 

Horse-Shoe Nail 

Illustrated 




&© ^* 3 



MDCCCXCVI. 

PUTNAM NAIL COMPANY 

Neponset, Boston, Mass. 
U. S. A. 



Copyright 1896 
Putnam Nail Company 



St. Botolph Press 
Boston, Mass. 



Prefatory Verse. 

The Wonderful Putnam Nail. 





F COURSE you 've heard of the Putnam Nail 
Which never yet has been known to fail 
To do the best work that a nail can do 
When driven into a horse's shoe : 
The only nail that can hold its place 

Firmly, in stall, on the road, in the race, 

The favorite nail of the world to-day, 

Because it is made in a sensible way. 

For in making horse-nails, "I tell you what, 
There is always somewhere a weakest spot" 
As the Deacon said of his one-hoss shay. 
The best can be made but in just one way — 
And that is the good old-fashioned way 
That the blacksmiths had in Putnam's day, 
When the red-hot iron was hammered by hand 
Till the metal was made of a temper to stand 
The hardest wear; and the nail made so stout 
That 'twould hold its place, till the shoe wore out. 
And a hand-made nail, we boldly claim 
Is the article bearing the Putnam name. 
Hot-forged, hammer-pointed, at bottom and top 



Such as came from the old-fashioned blacksmith shop. 





Even better than that is the product we make, 

For far more pains with the metal we take. 

We heat it by gas: no sulphur from coal tes 

Is allowed to weaken the fibre whole, 

Or to raise on its surface the treacherous scale, 

Which makes it in toughness and strength to fail 

The blacksmith gave it but thirty blows, 

And sixty we give: but no giant knows 

The power with which our hammers strike, 

With equal force, each point alike. 




And so we repeat, what before we have said, 
Our nail is the best that ever was made. 



v . i 




'Tis like the wonderful one-hoss shay 

That lived a hundred years, to a day, 

(Because 'twas built in a sensible way), 

And died at last of a "mild decay, 

But nothing local, as one may say. 

There couldn't be — for the Deacon's art 

Had made it so like in every part 

That there wasn't a chance for one to start." 

Holmes says " you see, if you 're not a dunce, 

How it went to pieces all at once, 

All at once, and nothing first, - 

Just as bubbles do, when they burst." 

And we may say " if you 're not a dunce, 

You will try the Putnam Nail at once;" 

For when you have tried it, we know you will say, 

"The Putnam Nail beats the one-hoss shay." 




£^•7 



For the shay had "a shiver and then a thrill," 
The parson had something quite "like a spill," 
And found his chaise in a heap or mound 
As if it had been to the mill and ground. 

But the parson's " rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay" 

Unmoved, looked on the wreck that day; 

Neither earthquake shock nor November gale, 

Though it wreck a chaise, can make him quail. 

It is said of the nag that he just stood still, 

Close by the meeting-house on the hill; 

Marius in Carthage is not more grand 

Than Dobbin that day, as we see him stand 

Wondering what on earth 's the matter, 

And what can mean that mighty clatter. 

He 's the only stable thing that's found 

Amid the wreck that strews the ground; 

The wreck of wheels, and panels, and thills, 

Of hubs, and axles, and springs and sills. 

A total wreck was the one-hoss shay, 

Serene stood the "rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay." 

Whence came his calm and confident look? 

You will learn while reading the Putnam book, 

For there its reason will plainly appear, 

(But we see no harm in stating it here). 

There was no reason for him to feel fright 

So long as he knew that his feet were all right, 

No sensible horse will ever refuse 

To put forth his best when he's sure of his shoes — 

And to do his whole duty he never can fail 

When his shoes are put on with the Putnam Nail. 





» m ff 




" Where are you going, my pretty maid?" 
" To be shod ivith the Putnam Nail" she said. 
" By your whiskers gray and your brush-broom tail 
I perceive you don't use the Tuttiam Nail." 



The Making 

■a °f a 

Horse-shoe Nail 




N THE good old times of General 
Putnum, an industrious blacksmith, 
doing a full day's work, could turn 
out twelve pounds of horse-shoe 
nails. Of the smith who could do 
this it is said: 

«# # # a m ighty man is he 
With large and sinewy hands, 

And the muscles of his brawny arms 

Are strong as iron bands." 

Twelve pounds of horse-shoe nails ! enough to shoe, 
perhaps, fifty horses. 

In these better times of ours, within a short distance 
of Dorchester Heights, from which the heroic Putnam, 
in 1776, helped Washington to frighten the British 
out of Boston, is the now world-renowned Putnam Nail 
Works. This establishment can turn out, by improved 
machinery, more than 20,000 pounds, or ten tons, of 
horse-shoe nails in a day, — a product equal to that 
of two thousand blacksmiths. 

Small, indeed, is a horse-shoe nail, and few people 
realize the immensity of this great factory, devoted 
solely to its manufacture. The works comprise in ail 
fifteen buildings, and cover ten acres of ground. Here 
is made the best horse-shoe nail in the world, and the 
daily product is more than that of any three other 
such works. More than four hundred persons are Hammer 
employed. Of these, one hundred are forgers, Pointed 

9 



Horse-shoe Nail 



who, with the special machines, do exactly what the old- 
fashioned blacksmith did by hand — forge the nail hot 
— only each man turns out about twenty times as 
much in quantity as did the worthy son of Vulcan. 

Now, the horse-shoe nail is a very important article. 
The significance of an ordinary nail is practically 
nothing, but a horse-shoe nail is the most important 
article of wearing apparel of the most useful and 
valuable of all animals. It must be made on scientific 
principles, and be exactly right in every particular. 
Every lover of horses must have considerable interest 
in a matter so vital to horse and man. For many years 
the Putnam Nail has claimed to be the best nail in the 
world. In these days of fierce business competition it 
is the habit of manufacturers to call their goods the 
best, and many false claims are made. It is the object 
of this little book to illustrate and describe the making 
of the Putnam Nail, fully and clearly, so that the reader 
may see for himself that the Putnam Hot-forged and 
Hammer-pointed Horse-shoe Nail is not only in truth 
the best but is really the only perfect nail. 

Let us together trace the making of this nail through 
the works. We will take a look into 



The Great Storehouses. 

Here are piles and rows, weighing hundreds of 
tons, of nail rods of various sizes coiled into bundles. 
Good iron is the first essential in the making of a 
good horse nail. This, combined with a process which 
will not deteriorate it, insures superiority. Much of the 
value of a horse nail depends upon its toughness 
and clinching power. It is the clinch that holds Hammer 
the shoe in place. The quality of toughness in the Pointed 



12 The Making of a 

iron is indispensable, for without it the nail is sure to 
break at the clinch. The Putnam Nail is so tough 
that, in drawing an old shoe, the clinch comes with the 
nail. It does not break off and remain in the hoof, as 
in the case of many cheap and brittle nails. 

Now, what about this iron ? 

Well, the story is this : every pound of it is im- 
ported from Sweden. It is noted for its strength and 
toughness, and no other iron that can be found in the 
world equals it in these qualities. We shall call this 

POINT NUMBER ONE 

of superiority of the Putnam Nail over all competitors. 
Although extensive search has been made by this 
company, no mine but one has ever been found to 
produce an ore good enough for making the Putnam 
Nail. For thirty years the iron has been bought from 
one place in Sweden, and is made expressly for the 
Putnam Nail Company. The mine yielding this fine 
ore is known to have been in operation for more than 
six hundred years. The cost of this brand of iron is 
very high, but no expense is considered too great in 
getting the proper material to begin with. The iron 
is purchased in lots of 2,500 tons and upwards, to keep 
the ultimate cost to the consumer as low as possible. 

Now that we have seen the iron, and learned its 
quality, we will go into one of 

The Great Nail Mills. 

The larger one of the two is 225 feet long. There 

are here sixty-six forging machines in four rows. Each 

machine has four steel hammers pounding the rod 

Hot with lightning strokes, so that the mill is filled with 

Forged an exceeding great noise. Words are inadequate 



Horseshoe Nail 



13 



to describe the frightful din. Suppose we say it is 
"stunning." Not stunning as is a new bonnet or its 
pretty owner, but literally stunning to our senses. Most 
of the men keep cotton in their ears to shut out the roar 
as of 10,000 Gatling guns, walled and roofed in. If 
you yell in your loudest voice you cannot be heard a 
foot away, and if you happen to have your ears with you 
they won't help you to hear anything. Homer tells 
us about the great shop of Vulcan, one of the twelve 
gods of the Greeks, 
Olympian Majesty, 
Jupiter; but Vulcan 
and all his swarthy 
crew, in fashioning 
the great shield of 




One of the Nail Machines 

Achilles, could not have made a tithe of the noise of 
the two hundred and seventy hammers in this large 
mill. But never mind the noise. 

We come now to the very point. 

Just here, at one of these machine forges, you Hammer 
will see the most important reason of the immensely Pointed 



16 The Making of a 

superior quality of the Putnam Nail over any and all 
other machine-made horse-shoe nails. Looking at the 
accompanying engraving of the machine, you see a coil 
of iron rod upon a reel and the end running through 
the forge. Each machine is complete in itself, and this 
forge holds the gas fire, not coal. This is 

POINT NUMBER TWO. 

The sulphurous flames of coal would injure the iron 
and something better must be found. If the flying 
hammers stopped a moment you would hear the roar 
of gas mixed with air, about half gas and half air, in 
just the right proportion to form an intensely hot 
flame. This combination of gas and air is forced into 
each forge by the great blower out in the engine house, 
which we will look at later. 

But now look at the rod of iron. On the entrance 
side it is cold, but passing through this short forge it 
emerges on the other side red hot, to be exact, just at a 
welding heat, and here we score 

POINT NUMBER THREE. 

To treat iron just right there is only one way : 

Shape it by hammer blows at a welding heat. 

But watch closely again. The red-hot rod is moving 

forward, and the four flying steel hammers rain rapid 

blows upon it, striking alternately in pairs, drawing it 

out exactly to the 

right length and 

shape, and down 

drops the nail into the revolving iron pan on the floor — 

Hot still red-hot, but forged from head to point — a 

Forged perfect nail. But while I have been speaking a 



Horse-shoe Nail 17 

dozen more have dropped, so like lightning fly the 
hammers on the white metal. 

Now watch this one closely. 

See just what is the exact motion of the hammers. 
Does the rod jump forward the length of the nail, and 
is it crushed into shape ? Not at all. You see by 
looking closely that only about half an inch of the rod 
is consumed in making the long nail, and watching 
now still more closely, you see this half-inch of white- 
hot iron, by the peculiar form and action of the ham- 
mers, drawn from head to point in exactly the same 
way that a blacksmith does it by hand. That is to say, 
it is drawn by percussive and elastic hammer blows 
only. And this is the great feature which we shall call 

POINT NUMBER FOUR* 

And it is a very great point. 

It is the distinguishing point. It makes a great 
difference whether the hot iron is rolled or pressed 

into shape, or 
whether the hot 
iron receives a 
great many dis- 
tinct hammer 
blows, as it does 
in making the 
Putnam Nail. 
To illustrate the 
point very clear- 
ly, we show you 
right here a photographic illustration of the way the 
Putnam Nail looks after it has received first eight 
blows, then sixteen, twenty-four, thirty-two, and Hammer 
finally thirty-six blows. The Putnam Nail is the Pointed 




°q 



i 



, 



1 





20 The Making of a 

only machine-made horse-shoe nail in the world that is 
drawn in this manner from the hot iron. All others 
are sheared, rolled, cut or punched, either cold or hot, 
and this is why the Putnam Nail has achieved its great 
renown, and why the world of farriers accept it, and 
use it as the best. This is the reason it never splits 
in driving, as nails made by unnatural methods are 
liable to do. 

Our nail is almost finished now. As we have seen, 

there is no punching or 
shearing, neither cut- 
ting or rolling. The 
work is done, and or- 

Showing Spl^N^ SS2s =s~ dinar y horse sens f tells 

us it was done in the 

right way. But let us learn more about this nail, and 

more of the great Putnam factory. 

There are about seventy men in the larger nail 

mill, one to each machine, and forty in the other. 

Where are the rest of the Putna*m "400?" 

Let us move along through the works and we shall 

find them. Before we follow the nail any further we 

will look into the other nail mill. You see it is arranged 

exactly like the larger one. The work is the same, 

and the machines are the same only there is a less 

number of them. Looking down the full length of the 

room you will see now and then a man stoop down and 

with the tongs pick up the red hot nail which has just 

dropped into the pan and inspect it closely. A little 

later on we shall see why he does this. The track, 

which you see in the picture running down the centre 

passageway, is for moving the cars or trucks of nails. 

Hot Following it to the end of the room the track ends 

Forged upon a platform, which is lowered by machinery to 



Horse-shoe Nail 



21 



the level of a tunnel, through which the car is rolled Jg| 
to another building, and up into the black room. Each %T J 
of these nail mills has its foreman, who has an office in 
the building. One of them is the oldest horse-shoe 
nail maker in Amer- 
ica, and has been 
with this company 
thirty-six years. In 
the illustrations he 
stands at the door of 
the gas house. He 
will tell you, that 
from long experience 
in the mills, he can 
hear better in the 
midst of the appal- 
ling roar of the ma- 
chines than he can 
outside — a wonder- 
ful thing to a novice 
and suggestive of 
Byron's " Prisoner of 
Chillon," who says: 

"My very chains and I grew friends, 
So much a long communion tends 
To make us what we are." 
Let us now go over to the long new-brick building 
to what is called the black room. 




The Gas House. 

As we cross the yard you will see the gas house, 
and notice on the door the warning that "No 
lighted cigar or match or other fire must come Hammer 
within fifty feet of this building" — a necessary Pointed 



24 The Making of a 



® 



» precaution, for this is as dangerous as a powder-house. 
Xj Here is manufactured one million cubic feet of gas 
which is consumed each day in the one hundred forges 
of the nail machines. 



The Black Room. 

Well, here we are at the black room, and here begins 
that wonderful system of careful inspection which ends 
only as the finished boxes of Putnam Nails are ready 
to be shipped to the markets of the world, free from 
flaws of any kind, each individual nail perfect in size, 
shape and strength. This room is called the black room 
because the product comes to it black, direct from the 
forge, with all the marks upon it of the fiery trials 
through which it has just passed. If the nail could go 
to the world as it is now it would speak for itself, 
and say: 

See ! I am the only hot-forged one. 

Looking at the picture of this black room, you will 
see iron pails of horse-shoe nails standing in tiers, and 
on trucks just from the forges. Each pail is numbered 
and when its contents are emptied into one of the iron 
trays the skillful inspector, examining the nail care- 
fully, rejects or accepts the work on its merits. So we 
see now just why each man in the nail mill picks up 
with his tongs the red-hot nails, one by one, and care- 
fully inspects his work. And we shall call this first 
rejection of poor nails 

POINT NUMBER FIVE 

in favor of the Putnam. The good nails are now 
Hot weighed and credited to the forger, who is paid by 

Fo?-ged the pound for his perfect product. After this 



Horse-shoe Nail 25 



assorting the nails are treated in bulk, size for size, 
and passed along to another room, where we will follow 
them. 



The Polishing Room. 



In the picture you see the rows of great revolving 
iron barrels into which the black nails are emptied to 
be rolled — in what? acid, to clean them? No, no, no. 
Acid and iron, like Rip Van Winkle and his wife, 

" Don't agree veil togedder." 
Acid would injure the iron with which so much care 
has been taken at the forges. Just friction in pure 
water to clean them, that is all. Over and over roll 
the iron barrels of nails to remove the dirt, oil, little 
scales and sharp corners — for sharp corners cut and 
tear the hoof of the horse, and here we must nail 

POINT NUMBER SIX. 

Looking closely at the finished Putnam Nail you 
will see that the four corners are not sharp; they are 
smooth as glass, and somewhat rounding. The tumbling 
of the tumblers is timed to this result. 

Now, why? The civilized world knows that a round 
wire nail will hold better than the old cut-nail, and 
this discovery was the death warrant of the cut-nail. 
The sharp cut-nail cuts the fibres of the wood ahead 
of itself, and there is no tension left. The wire nail 
presses the fibre of the wood to each side and so 
increases the tension. So it is with the Putnam Horse- 
shoe Nail. No sharp, knife-like edges to cut and tear 
a hole as large as itself, but a smooth edge to press the 
hood aside, leaving no chance for the nail to chug 
up and down in a hole in the hoof. To be sure Hammer 
the sheared and punched nail may drive a trifle Pointed 



mmmmm 





\\ 






28 The Making of a 

easier because it does cut, but that is really a bad point 
scored against itself. If the Putnam Nail drives a 
mere trifle harder it will be found to hold harder, and 
the hoof will be in better condition invariably if the 
Putnam Nail is used. 

After rolling in water just long enough, the water 
is drawn off and another tumbling is had, this time 
in dry sawdust, for polishing. Now the nails are no 
longer black, but white or nearly white, like silver, and 
are sent to the 

Hammer-pointing Room. 

We will again cross into the other building, and 
now you will be astonished. Here are ninety-three 
pointing machines with a pleasant girl or young woman 
seated before each. The nails from the polishing drums 
are brought here in small boxes, and a boxful emptied 
into the iron tray in the top of the machine. Now 
observe ; the nails are picked up and fed into a little 
slot, one only at a time. Think of it! The ten daily 
tons of nails are handled one by one. If you are in- 
terested to note what this means, here are the statistics. 
There are about 128 nails to a pound, or 256,000 nails 
to a ton, or 2,560,000 in 10 tons. This would be more 
than 25,000 to each girl per day, or 2,500 an hour, or 
40 a minute. This careful handling of each individual 
nail we shall claim is 

POINT NUMBER SEVEN 

in favor of the wonderful Putnam. 

Now pick up a nail that has passed through the 

machine. It has been straightened where it should be, 
Hot and has a perfect "set;" and look at the point! In 

Forged passing through the machine the extreme end of the 



Horse-shoe Nail 



nail has received the blow of a hammer, and been 
flattened or beveled a trifle. This bevel is called the 
scarf, and gives the nail the proper direction in the hoof. 
Looking at the 
picture you will 
see that this 
pointing ma- 
chine is quite a 
complicated af- 
fair. It is really 
a very wonderful 
machine. It 
consists of a se- 
ries of hammers 
which catch the 
nail as it is fed 
into the slot, and 
strike it succes- 
sively front and 
back to straight- 
en it, giving it 
exactly the prop- 
er "set." Then 
comes the blow 

of the hammer upon the point of the nail which gives 
it a bevel or scarf, and this is 




POINT NUMBER EIGHT 



which distinguishes the Putnam Nail. 

The nail, after being hot-forged is, in this machine, 
"hammer pointed." It receives as the finishing touch 
the gentle blow of a hammer upon its point to 
bevel it in exactly the same manner that the Hammer 
hand-made nail was treated by the blacksmith. Pointed 



3 2 The Making of a 



This exact imitation of the hand process in forging and 
pointing is the all-distinguishing feature of the Putnam 
Nail, and is what has made it, and still keeps it, the 
acknowledged leader of all machine-made horse-shoe 
nails. 

This hammer pointing is the last machine opera- 
tion. Still, we are not through with this wonderful 
nail. We have now another surprise in store for you. 
The nails are finished and ready for the horse, but 
they must not be sent out without final inspection. 

Here we are in 



The Assorting Room, 



and here are one hundred more industrious young 
women bending over the iron trays. There are about 
fifty of them on each side of the room, as you see in 
the cut. Once again ten tons of nails are gone over 
every day, one nail at a time. Each nail must be looked 
at, turned over, measured for thickness and length, and 
the scarf must be found to be on the proper side. This 
careful one-by-one inspection under the eyes of the 
experienced sorter is 

POINT NUMBER NINE, 

if we have kept the count. Every nail that is bent, or 
rough, or too short, or too long, or too thin, or even 
with a little scale upon it, is thrown out as unworthy of 
the Putnam brand. 

And ultra wonder of all. 

This company is so jealous of the reputation of its 

nail, that each box of nails is once more looked through 

Hot by an experienced man to see that each sorter has 

Forged done her work well. These nails in the process of 



Horse-shoe Nail 



33 




Sorting the Nails 

manufacture have been handled in bulk fourteen times ( 
and three times have received a most searching indi- 
vidual inspection. 

Now, and not until now, are the goods ready to be 
shipped. 

At one end of this sorting room is 

The Packing Department, 

of which we show an illustration. The Putnam Nails 
are shipped in twenty-five pound boxes ; for some 
markets, twenty-five pounds of loose nails ; and for Ha77imer 
other markets the nails are put up first in five Poiiited 



34 



The Making of a 



Hot 



pound pasteboard cartons, and five cartons packed in a 
box. An exceedingly interesting feature is the folding 
of the telescopic cartons from flat sheets, and a picture 
is shown of the operator folding and setting them up. 
This young woman is a working wonder, and so fast 

fly her deft fin- 
gers that her 
exact method 
cannot be seen. 
She is, perhaps, 
the champion of 
the world in this 
class of work, 
for she can in 
one day of ten 
hours, fold and 
put together 
2,100 of these 
boxes, or three 
a minute. 

Now the car- 
tons are filled 
with nails, and 
the jogging ma- 
chine shakes the nails down snugly; the weighing 
scales are handy, balanced at five pounds; five cartons 
are packed in the wooden box and deftly slid along to 
the man who presides at an ingenious automatic hailing 
machine, which fastens on the cover. 

Thus we have traced the Putnam Nail from the rod 

of iron to the boxes for the market, ready to challenge 

the world to produce its equal. From this point these 

celebrated nails are shipped to all parts of the 




Forged civilized world. 



Horse-shoe Nail 



35 



A General View 

Before we leave we must look about this great 
establishment, that has invested half a million of dollars 
in producing nails fit for the stallion of a king, or the 
hoofs of his choicest cavalry horses. While we have 
seen the nail made, there is a great deal yet to fill us 
with astonishment. The building, which you see here 




Packing Room 
in the centre of the yard, is the power-house. We will 
go in and see the battery of eight great boilers with a 
capacity of 700 horse-power, and the mighty, double 
Corliss engine of 600 horse-power. Passing through 
this open door we find another engine — a Macintosh- 
Seymour Compound — of 135 horse-power which runs 
the dynamo for lighting the entire works and offices, 
and also runs the great blower, of which we have 
spoken. This large machine forces, daily, 2,500,000 
cubic feet of air through underground pipes to the one 
hundred gas forges in the nail mills. 

The Blacksmith Shop 

Now we must visit the blacksmith shop, be- 
cause you will want to know how fifteen or twenty Hammer 
blacksmiths, seven forges and two powerful steam Pointed 



Horse-shoe Nail 



31 



trip hammers can be employed in making a little thing 
like a horse-shoe nail. Let us see! Most of these 
men are making and repairing the steel hammers for 
the nail machines. Here you will get, perhaps, the best 
impression of the magnitude of this establishment. As 




Macintosh-Seymour Engine and Dynaino 

we have seen, there are one hundred nail machines with 
four hammers to each machine, so that four hundred 
steel hammers must be in operation all the time. But 
these hammers, raining blows upon hot iron, and forg- 
ing ten tons of horse-shoe nails, show wear in a few 
hours, and must be replaced or renewed two, three or 
four times a day; and the adjustment is so nice that 
the hammers must work in sets of four, so that if one 
hammer is damaged all four must be changed. 

This, then, is the explanation of the large black- 
smith shop. Nails that are truly hot forged require a 
great many hammers, and about eight hundred of 
these machine hammers are handled every day. Ha?nmer 
Sixteen to twenty men work here repairing them Pointed 



3* 



The Making of a 



* and making new ones. Then all these hammers must 

J * have their steel faces tempered, and the illustration 

shows two hardening forges in the room adjoining the 

blacksmith shop. Here, also, the fire is gas flame, 




and these two workmen harden six or eight hundred 
hammers every day. The hammers then go over to 
the machine shop and are fitted to the nail machines. 
The preparation of these hammers and the making and 
repairing of the nail machines and hammer-pointing 
machines is all done right here on the premises. On 
our way over to the machine shops we shall see another 
building. This contains the carpenter shop and tin 
shop. Acres of buildings and miles of roofing require 
constantly the services of these mechanics. 



The Machine Shops 



There are two machine shops in this large two-story 
Hot building — one on each floor — and this department 

Forged of the Putnam Nail Works is a very busy one. We 



Horse-shoe Nail 



39 



should properly include the blacksmith shop with this 
department, for the machine and blacksmith shops 
together make and keep in repair all the machines and 
parts used in making the Putnam Nails. When you 
think of it, this is a big statement, for we have been 
through the works and seen two great mills full of forging 





The Big Blower 
machines, and another room full of pointing machines. 
It is true, however, that all of these machines were 
built right here in the company's own shops. On this 
lower floor the lathes, planers and drills are used in 
making the machines and in general repairs. Upstairs 
the principal work is on the steel hammers themselves, 
of which, as we have seen, there are great numbers. 
The shaping and repairing of these steel hammers 
requires special milling machines, and you see ten or a 
dozen of them on this upper floor. These milling 
machines were also made on the premises. There Hammer 
is another room connected with this department Pointed 




' ^. :.-- 



42 The Making of a 

which we should see. It is the stock room. Here are 
kept all of the "parts" of the various machines through- 
out the works, and a large supply of all necessary tools. 
Here, in perfect order, and all numbered, are upwards of 
$50,000 worth of extra parts of machines and machine 
tools. And speaking of order and system, the visitor's 
attention cannot fail to be attracted to the perfect 
cleanliness and order about the entire works. Even 
the great nail mills and blacksmith shops, with all 
their smoke and noise, appear neat and clean, and 
confusion reigns nowhere. So, in this stock room, the 
foreman can go instantly and pick from its own bin, 
or from its own peg, any new part to supply the place 
of a broken one. Plenty of each sort is kept on 
hand so that no delays occur. Astonishing to relate, 
there are more than sixty men constantly employed in 
this machine department. 

The Matter of Cheapness 

We have completed the tour of this great establish- 
ment and have seen all that is interesting. We have 
seen the largest factory of the kind in the world, and 
have watched closely the making of the best horse-shoe 
nail. Perhaps one of the most serious errors of modern 
civilization is the fostering of what we may call " cheap- 
ness." The markets, in some way, are filled with 
cheap goods — and the cheap goods sell. American 
people in particular are said to enjoy being humbugged, 
and the popular craze is for bargains and job lots at a 
low price. The people who can least afford it w r aste their 
money on shoddy. This is true of almost everything 
Hot in the markets, from a pair of shoes to the family 

Forged medicines. In the past the smiths and horseshoers 



Horse-shoe Nail 43 

of both continents have used the Putnam Nail loyally, 
because it was the only absolutely safe and reliable 
nail; but the markets to-day are surfeited with cheap 
nails which push themselves insistently upon the atten- 
tion of buyers as being " cheaper " than the Putnam. 

Now, what about the cost? 

After all we have seen of the great care taken in 
selecting the best iron ; the extensive process of heat- 
ing it to a welding heat ; the drawing by hammer blows 
of each individual nail ; the polishing and hammer- 
pointing ; and last, the great system of inspecting and 
sorting, that searches out and rejects everything but 
perfect nails, we need not expect the cost to compare 
with that of the cheap nails flooding the markets. 

How 7nuch more, if any, does the Patman Nail cost ? 

It costs, perhaps, on an average, one cent more to 
shoe a horse with this nail, yet it often happens that a 
valuable animal will be lamed, and occasionally one 
will be ruined, in trying to save this one cent. 

It takes only one-fourth of a pound of nails to shoe 
a horse ; therefore, with Putnam Nails at four cents a 
pound above cheap nails, it costs but one cent more to 
shoe a horse with a reliable nail. 

But the " Putnam " is, in reality, the cheapest. 

We have been informed by a reliable dealer, who 
has supplied for years a large city with Putnam Nails, 
that, in changing to a cheap nail for six months, it was 
found that it cost more in dollars and cents to shoe 
the city horses for a given time with cheap nails 
at twelve cents a pound, than with Putnam Nails Hammer 
at seventeen cents a pound. Pointed 



Buy the Best 



Send for the 



Mascot Ring 



Mailed for JO Cents, Stamps or Silver* 

'pHE Putnam Nail Rings 

were first sent out as a j 

novelty and to show the per- 
fect point and smooth edges. 
Recently we have received 

Astonishing; Testimonials 

of their efficacy in the l -4fV 

CURE OF 

Rheumatism. 

If they do possess this 
virtue (which was wholly 
unexpected to us), it must 
be from the peculiar charm 
in their manufacture by Fire, 
Water and Gas (no acids) 
and the circle of hammers 
before mentioned. 

The horse with healthy 
feet safely shod with Putnam 
Nails feels this "charm." 
Why not the owner also ? 

Pictures Free. 

Colored Litho., 12 x 13 in., " Fairy and the Thorn," postage 2c. 

" Robert Bonner Superintending the Shoeing of Sunol." postage ic. 

Striking Colored Lithograph, " Tandem Team," postage 5c. 

Or all Three Pictures in One Roll, postage 6c. 





Putnam Nail Company, 



Neponset, Boston, Mass. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

illl 




